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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of technological cooperation with suppliers (TCS) and the firm size on propensity to develop product innovations and on propensity to radical innovations.

The study uses data from Business Strategies Survey (ESSE in Spanish). The final sample was composed by 1,952 companies representing the Spanish manufacturing industries. Some control variables were introduced: age, propensity to export and sector technological intensity level. Logistic regression analyses were adopted to analyze the data.

The results indicate that those firms that cooperate technologically with suppliers have a greater propensity for product innovation and, specifying, for radical innovations; and the larger firm size, greater the propensity to product innovations. However, radical product innovations depend of some characteristics of firms and environment.

The sample just focusses on Spanish manufacturing companies. Small firms will benefit more from the TCS.

Some characteristics of firms and environment can originate some rigidity and take a more conservative attitude. In this sense, large and small firms, as well as, the oldest firms have a more conservative attitude when they carry out radical product innovations.

The study contributes to product innovation literature and also to the debate regarding firm size and innovation. It distinguishes between radical and incremental innovations. Indeed, some characteristics of firms (such as size or age) and environment should be considered when the firms carry out the innovation process.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between heterogeneous collaborative networks and firm performance, using the resource-based view (RBV) and its extension through the knowledge-based view (KBV) as theoretical lens. Moreover, the authors examine family management and intellectual property rights (IPRs) as contingent factors that enhance the effectiveness of heterogeneous collaborative networks in achieving superior firm performance.

The hypotheses are developed and checked by using a panel data sample of 10,985 firm-year observations from 1,766 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2007–2016.

The results indicate that heterogeneous collaborative networks positively influence firm performance. Furthermore, the positive impact of these innovation networks on firm performance is reinforced by high levels of family management, and such effect is even stronger when there exists high levels of IPRs.

This research is the first, to our knowledge, to provide important new insights into the manner in which the effect of both family management and IPRs have the potential to amplify the performance gains attained from heterogenous collaborative networks.

Product innovations are often the result of combinations of internal and external knowledge. A significant amount of open innovation literature has argued that working with external partners can be beneficial, in particular, when this is complemented by internal R&D, yet a wholesale shift to open innovation has not occurred. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate two new limits of openness, grounded in attention-based theory, that help explain why such a shift has not occurred. This study argues that specific combinations of identities a firm collaborates with, that is, whether a partner is classified as a customer, supplier, competitor or university and/or technological center, predictably increase and decrease product innovation.

This study demonstrates these findings using econometric techniques on a large-scale panel data set, comprising 14,682 observations.

The authors observe positive effects of customer collaboration, partner scope (collaboration with other outside identities) and internal R&D when considered separately. Critically, they observe two important situations where these positive effects are reduced. First, they argue and observe that when customers are added to the mix of identities, diminished returns on product innovation result. Second, they argue and observe that technological customer collaboration reduces the benefits from an internal R&D department (more than collaboration with other identities). The findings of this study are robust in that singling out another partner identity does not reveal such patterns.

The findings stress the importance of considering the identity of collaborating parties in studying the impact of openness on innovation success. This study conceptually and empirically rejects the – implicitly held – assumption in the literature that different partners provide similar benefits and are interchangeable.

This study proposes new limits to the “open innovation” literature. As identities are easy to observe by managers and are shown to impact product innovation, this study argues they are highly relevant to managerial decision-making. This study also observes, through counterfactual analysis, that attention limits are critical, as a theoretical setting of no attention limits would significantly lift product innovations.

This study shows important limitations to the open innovation literature by showing that customer collaboration leads to declining rates of product innovation when combined with greater collaboration scope or the internal R&D department. This study adds the novel insight that customer collaboration weakens the positive effect of collaboration scope and internal R&D on product innovations.

This paper provides empirical evidence for how gender diversity in top management teams (TMTs) and collaboration with university and technological centres lead to innovation outcomes. The authors review past research on these concepts and illustrate their individual and joint effects on process innovation specifically in the unique context of family firms (FFs).

The authors used a sample of 788 Spanish manufacturing family firms in 2016 and applied logistic regression models since the dependent variables are dummies.

The authors found a positive relationship between gender-diverse TMTs, process innovation and research and development (R&D)-based process innovation. Similarly, the collaboration with university technological centres is positively associated with higher innovation outcome of FFs. In addition, the authors also found that the presence of women in TMTs shapes the relationship between the collaboration with university technological centres and process innovation.

This paper contributes to the research on collaborative innovation in FFs by emphasizing the collaboration with university technological centres, an external partner often ignored by this stream of literature. This research also responds to the calls for further study of the effect of the heterogeneity of the TMTs on the innovation outcome of FFs, from the perspective of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firms.

This study aims to examine how temporary employment and organizational size moderate the effect of human capital on firm performance. The authors also analyze the overall effect of human capital, temporary contracts and organizational size on firm performance. This enables them to identify which combination of these three variables leads to the highest levels of profitability.

From a sample of 1,403 Spanish firms, the authors carry out a comparative analysis of the impact of human capital on labor productivity and return on sales among small and large companies with high and low use of temporary employment.

The positive effect of human capital on return of sales is greater in large firms with low temporary employment than in small firms with high temporary employment. In addition, this positive effect is not universal because in some scenarios it is not significant. The most beneficial context is that of large companies with a high level of human capital and a low use of temporary employment.

The results should be interpreted within the Spanish manufacturing sector.

Decisions about investment in human capital and the use of temporary workers should be taken jointly by personnel managers, in accordance with the size of the firm. If this holistic view is ignored, a full understanding of the impact of human capital on firm performance will be obscured. On the other hand, a common feature that large and small firms share is an incompatibility between human capital and temporary employment.

Growing interest has been shown in the degree to which investment in human capital contributes to firm performance; yet limited research attention has been paid to the contextual conditions that moderate this relationship. Investment in human capital can be more beneficial in some scenarios than in others.

This study investigates the relationship between family-managed firms and firm employment growth by considering the effects of location and economic crisis as moderating variables.

The study uses random-effect models on a large panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms covering 2003 to 2015 to estimate the joint effects of municipality size and economic crisis on firm employment growth.

The analysis reveals a positive association between family-managed firms and employment growth. However, this association is not uniform across space and time. When it considers location, the study finds that municipality size positively affects employment growth in family-managed firms but not in non-family firms. Additionally, while the study reveals that both firm types experience negative employment growth during the early stage of the global economic crisis (2007–08), it also finds that family-managed firms located in small municipalities downsize less than their non-family counterparts.

This study provides new evidence on the resilience of family-managed firms during economic crises, particularly those located in geographically bounded settings, such as small municipalities. When an adverse event, such as an economic crisis, jeopardizes employment levels, the embedded and trust-based relationships, between a family firm and its community leads them to prioritize employees' claims. However, family-managed firms' commitment to preserve jobs in small municipalities cannot be maintained over the long term; this effect disappears if the economic crisis is protracted. This study sheds new light on family-managed firms' distinctive behavior toward with local communities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and innovation performance in Spanish manufacturing firms. The paper focuses on the number of existing patents, analyzing the extent to which this variable is favored by HRM practices. It will also assess the extent to which patents explain the firm performance and mediate in the relationship between the latter and HRM practices.

The objective is to assess these relationships using the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behavior. The longitudinal analysis focuses on the years between 2001 and 2008, a period of great economic growth in Spain.

The findings show that the most innovative firms were also the most competitive ones. Furthermore, employment security positively affects innovations over time and training on new technologies is associated with the number of patents, when overall compensation practices are high.

This study demonstrated the existence of two objectives that HR managers should be aiming at. On the one hand, the development of patents should be a priority for obtaining better results over time. On the other hand, management should invest in HRM practices because they favor innovation and are neither a waste of time nor resources.

This study contributes to the literature, surpassing the limitations of previous research, by assessing the role of HRM practices in innovation and company outcomes and by using a longitudinal study design.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the joint effect of product and international diversification strategies on the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Spain.

The authors rely on a panel data of small and medium Spanish manufacturing enterprises over the period 1993‐2006, collected from the Spanish Survey of Business Strategies.

The evidence reveals the existence of a negative relationship between geographic expansion and profitability. Likewise, the adoption of both product and international diversification is not associated with higher performance.

A promising avenue for future research is the analysis of firms located in different countries (for example, emerging economies), or the study of this issue considering factors such as the ownership structure (family firms, the role of the state and banks, etc.).

The authors' analysis underlines the fact that the distinctive particularities of SMEs – for example, limited resources, lack of previous experience in the adoption of new products and accessing new markets – might constrain diversification as an alternative for firm growth. As a practical implication, Spanish SMEs should overcome their shortcomings before adopting diversification in order to improve the profitability associated with these strategies.

Although Spain's economic structure is highly segmented and made up of mainly SMEs, research on these companies in this country is rather scarce. In particular, the distinctive characteristics of SMEs mean that diversification might have different performance implications than for larger companies. Moreover, the authors' analysis offers new insights compared to previous research, which has traditionally relied on cross‐section data.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential existence of a concave downward curve between organizational commitment to employees (OCE) and labor productivity in small firms. It also aims to examine the moderating effects of labor intensity on this curvilinear relationship.

The paper uses a sample of 819 manufacturing small firms from the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Energy's Survey on Business Strategies, and applies hierarchical regression analysis to test its hypotheses.

The results support a non‐linear association between OCE investments and labor productivity: the higher the level of OCE, the lower its positive impact on organizational outcomes will be. The results also support the contingent view of strategic human resource management, so that an investment in OCE is more effective in some contexts than in others.

The paper concludes that managers and investors should be aware of the fact that investments in OCE are not always correspondingly beneficial. In the small firm setting, not all firms with large profits apply OCE. A high level of OCE investment may be counterproductive.

The strategic human resource management literature usually assumes a linear relationship between OCE and organizational outcomes; very few empirical studies have considered a nonlinear approach.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and innovative performance in the Spanish industry. Specifically, the authors will focus on innovativeness, analysing the extent to which this capability is favoured by some human resource management (HRM) practices as investments on training and whether it is also affected by the use of full time and/or temporary workers.

The authors propose the assessment of these relationships by means of the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behaviour. The authors focus the longitudinal analysis on the period 2001-2008, years of the highest economic growth in Spain during the last decades.

The findings show that the most innovative firms are also the most competitive ones in terms of added value. Moreover, while a significant and positive relationship between the use of full-time workers and innovativeness is demonstrated, the role of temporary workers employees remains unclear. Finally, and surprisingly, training investments on new technologies, languages and data processes do not have any impact on innovativeness. The paper is closed with a discussion about some lessons the authors may learn from these wealthy years and the role played by HRM investments on firms.

This study demonstrates the existence of two objectives that managers should seek to achieve. On one side, they should focus on innovation as a way of increasing firm performance. And, on the other side, managers should invest on specific training, in order to develop more innovative and profitable organizations.

This paper proposes and tests a model where innovation mediates the relationships between HRM practices and performance. Such mediation would be a contribution to the strategic HRM field as very recent research call for the study of new mediators. Also, this paper employs panel data (2001-2008) for assessing these relationships. This is worthy because it is coherent with the idea of internal development of capabilities, instead of cross-sectional analyses and because the authors may infer causality with the study design, as it is demanded by researchers.